


joy so pure

by beanierose



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Adoption, Family, Future Fic, M/M, i don't know what happened to me, i'm tender for two dads i guess, listen this might be the softest thing i have ever written in my whole life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 11:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20135008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose
Summary: A future fic. David and Patrick meet their daughter.





	joy so pure

**Author's Note:**

> I know I don't even go here anymore, but I found this on my hard drive and figured I should post it because don't we all deserve a little softness, every now and then? The title is from _my father moved through dooms of love_ by ee cummings.

The call comes in the middle of the afternoon. All this time, David has been imagining that it would come at night. That it would wrench both of them awake and everything would be made urgent and intimate by the darkness. Instead, they’re both at the store.

Patrick has the information pamphlets from their _PRIDE_ training — David is still so pleased that it’s called that — spread out on the desk in the back. It’s been seven months since they attended the Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education course, but Patrick still pores over all of the materials like he’s cramming for an examination.

Absolutely no one would have guessed that Patrick would be the one consumed by anxiety over this. Most evenings, David has to take the laptop out of his husband’s hands and put it away so that Patrick will rest. They passed their home study easily, passed the medical exam and the police background check. Everything has gone smoothly, and David thinks that might be what’s stressing Patrick out. It’s like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Oh my God. David. Oh my God,” Patrick says. He drops his cell phone to the desk and waves his trembling hands helplessly.

They’ve waited a year and a half for today.

David drives, which he hates, but Patrick looks like he’s about to collapse so it seems like the safer option. At the hospital they head straight for the maternity suite. They’ve met the birth mother a couple of times before. She _chose_ them, and it feels like a miracle.

Outside of her room, David reaches for Patrick’s hand and squeezes tight. A whole different life is on the other side of the door.

“Are you okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” Patrick manages.

“You might want to tell your face that.”

It earns him a smile, at least. David is the one to open the door, the first to step inside. Jessica is in the bed, eyes closed. She’s never looked younger, her face free of makeup and grief spilling in silvery tracks down her cheeks. Seventeen years old, and about to hand David and Patrick everything they’ve wanted.

Things happen very quickly, then. A representative from the adoption agency is there with papers for both parties to sign. Jessica doesn’t want to see the baby, had them take her to the nursery right away. It’s an open adoption, and David and Patrick have made it clear. Their baby’s mother can be in their lives as much or as little as she’s comfortable with.

A nurse comes then to take them down to the nursery. There are three or four babies in bassinets and she reaches in to scoop one out, hands her over. To David, because Patrick has both hands in the back pockets of his jeans. He accepts the soft little body in his arms and looks down at the baby’s face. His daughter.

His _daughter_.

The baby roots at David’s chest, little mouth smacking, and he laughs. She’s still a little bit gross-looking, because she’s freshly earth side. The whole process of being birthed has left her scrunched up and grumpy. Patrick is a warm presence at David’s back, peering around his shoulder to look at their little girl.

“Her Apgar was great,” the nurse tells them. “She’s doing really well.”

Now that the baby is in front of them, Patrick has stopped shaking. It’s David’s turn to feel jittery, and he passes their daughter over to Patrick. His hands free, he rakes them through his hair and lets out a slow breath.

It’s been two years since they first started talking about kids. Patrick had been the one to bring it up first, surprising no one. He is so nurturing and kind and soft that David has always known Patrick will make an amazing dad. It just never occurred to him to want it for himself, too. The more he thought about it, imagined raising a tiny person with Patrick, the more he realised just how badly he wanted that.

Yearning has been a living creature in the pit of his stomach for the last couple of years. And now their baby is here. He finds himself missing the warmth and the weight of her. Patrick’s head is bowed over her and he’s whispering something.

“Oh, David, look.”

He goes to his husband’s side. This life that the two of them are solely responsible for makes him love Patrick so fiercely that he can barely catch his breath. David leans in close and sees the baby’s clear and startled eyes pop open.

“Hi, Annie. We’re so happy you’re here.”

He has been worried that it would feel foolish. To let his tenderness come spilling out, to dismantle all of his many layers of artifice. It doesn’t. It feels exactly right.

“She looks like you.”

“Shut up,” David huffs.

Patrick knocks his elbow into David’s stomach, carefully so as not to jostle the baby. “I’m not kidding. Look at that hair.”

He smoothes his fingers over the cap of dark hair, but it’s no use. It sticks up all over the baby’s head like fur, a fuzzy little cub. David leans in to dust his lips to the wrinkled forehead. It keeps hitting him, over and over. This is their daughter. Tomorrow, or maybe even later today, they get to take her home, and she is theirs forever.

They spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out in the nursery. Other people come in and out, collecting their brand new babies or settling others into bassinets so the mothers can rest. Jessica has asked them for space, so they’re happy to stay in here with the baby.

It gives them a chance to practice all of their newly acquired skills. David changes a diaper, surprising no one more than himself. It’s not even as disgusting as he thought, not with Annie’s tiny little fists starfishing over her head.

Right now, the baby’s face is slack with sleep, her little mouth opening and closing. One of the nurses has dragged a couple of chairs in here for them, so David is sitting on one side of the bassinet with his husband opposite. Patrick has one hand wrapped around their daughter’s tiny foot and his other sweeps absentmindedly back and forth across her stomach.

“I can’t believe she’s really ours,” Patrick whispers.

Joy burns in David’s eyes and he blinks hard. He is mute, arrested by that sentiment. All of the things that they’ve built together, the store and their home and this life, all of it pales in comparison to their daughter. David reaches for Patrick’s hand and knots their fingers together.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be any good at this,” David confesses.

Now that Patrick has calmed down and become his usual, unflappable self, it’s David’s turn to be overwhelmed. He has hardly any experience with babies. Those of his friends from his old life who did have kids tended to disappear from the group.

David is, as his mother once said all those years ago, capricious and melodramatic. He also has a virulent selfish streak. Being with Patrick has taught him patience and compromise, but the way that a child requires him to give of himself is something else altogether.

“Do you love her, David?”

“Yes,” he says, and is startled by how much he means it.

“Do you want the best for her?”

“Duh.”

Patrick smiles and squeezes David’s fingers. “That’s everything. The rest of it all comes from that.”

* * *

They aren’t allowed to take their baby home until the next day. All of the paperwork has been dealt with, and in the eyes of the government, Annie is theirs. It hits David every few minutes and he has to stop, suck in a deep breath and let the ridiculous grin take over his face. He has a daughter. He is somebody’s dad.

She’s had all of her checks and her vaccinations and has been deemed completely healthy. After waiting so long, David can’t believe that it’s actually, really, finally happening. Patrick is taking charge of the car seat because it’s a complicated contraption that terrifies David.

Once they’ve got Annie all strapped in, David slides into the back of the car beside her. Patrick drives, and David takes the opportunity to study the baby. He sees the wheeling soft-focus of her eyes, the rosebud lips, the full cheeks. She’s gorgeous.

They come through the front door of the apartment and stop short. Patrick is in front, carrying the car seat, and David bumps up against his back. His mom and dad are here, with Alexis and Ted and Stevie. There are balloons and a banner welcoming them home and a cake.

“Welcome home!” Their family whisper-shouts at them so as not to wake the baby.

Everyone crowds around like geese, long-necked and flapping, trying to get a good look at Annie. She’s awake now, her mouth round as a fish. Patrick sets the car seat down on the dining table and begins the complicated process of extracting their daughter.

“Congratulations, son,” David’s dad says, and claps him on the shoulder.

His eyes feel misty again and he lifts them to the ceiling, just barely holding it together. He manages a very small thanks for his father, and accepts the distraction of Patrick speaking to him with relish.

“I’m going to put a bottle in the warmer. Take her.” He passes the baby over and David takes her. Fumbling a bit, because he’s awkward under the scrutiny of everyone he cares about watching him.

After a couple of adjustments, he gets himself and Annie both comfortable. She’s against his chest, little legs curled up and one tiny hand splayed flat over his heart.

“Annie Mariah Rose-Brewer,” he says proudly.

“Oh, David, there’s no need to venerate me like this.” His mother has both hands clasped and resting at her chest. Her face contorts into something approximating tenderness and she peers at her granddaughter.

“I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”

His mother frowns and tilts her head. “I thought one baby in this town carrying my appellation was an honour enough, but two?”

“It’s Mariah, Mrs Rose,” Patrick says as comes back over. “Not Moira.”

David finds himself relying on Patrick’s equanimity a lot of the time, especially when it comes to his parents. His mother is flapping her hands in dismissal, and he just doesn’t have it in him to argue with her about this right now. If she wants to believe that David and Patrick have named their daughter after her, well. . .fine.

Everybody takes a turn holding the baby, and it’s Alexis that has her for the longest. She’s reticent about it, but she keeps leaning in close and whispering in Annie’s ear. Patrick nudges David and nods his head towards Ted, who is watching Alexis and the baby with tears in his eyes. David shares a grin with his husband. He can’t imagine Alexis with kids, but then he couldn’t really imagine it for himself until the nurse put Annie in his arms yesterday.

By the time everybody leaves it’s dark outside. They have to figure out a routine, have to figure out how to be parents. Patrick is busying himself in the kitchen, so David settles in the rocker with his daughter. He arranges the baby against his chest and brushes a fingertip over the pout of the little one’s lips. He’s not wearing a shirt, because skin to skin content is extremely important especially for fathers. Especially when you haven’t spent forty weeks growing the baby inside of yourself.

Annie goes down easily and the two of them head to bed pretty much right away. The adrenaline is catching up to them both, now. David kisses Patrick closed-mouth and tender, curls his fingers against Patrick’s ears.

“There is no one in the whole world I would rather do this with than you,” Patrick says.

It all wells up inside of David, his joy and tenderness and fear. He lies on his side next to his husband and cries into the pillow, Patrick’s hand drifting up and down the length of his spine to gentle him.

It feels like it’s been about four minutes when the baby’s screams come around his throat like a fist and wrench him into consciousness, and David is out of bed before he’s awake. The middle of the night darkness is thick as velvet and David pads through to the other room with his hands out in front of him, feeling vertiginous and clumsy.

He scoops Annie out of the bassinet. She’s clammy with sleep and she wriggles in her father’s arms, mewling. David lets his lips brush the crown of her head and he whispers to her, soft nonsense. He changes her diaper, the first time he’s done it without Patrick hovering close by to supervise. Annie stops crying slowly, like a car engine sputtering out. He settles her back in the bassinet and pulls the rocker closer so he can sit beside it, one arm propped at the edge and his hand resting at the baby’s stomach.

None of this feels like real life, yet. It reminds him a little of when they first came to Schitt’s Creek and he just couldn’t seem to cognitively process that any of it was happening. It’s so different now, though. Instead of the rush of anxiety and grief he used to wake up to each morning, now every day he gets to remember that he has a husband and a daughter and a life that he has built for himself.

Patrick comes to get him and take him back to bed, warm hand wrapped around the meat of David’s bear paw. He knows it’s important to sleep when the baby is sleeping, that she’ll probably be awake again in another hour or so, but he doesn’t want to stop looking at her.

“She’s still gonna be here when you wake up,” Patrick tells him right before they sack out, and David smiles into his husband’s shoulder because _he knows_.

**Author's Note:**

> I would love to know what you thought!


End file.
